


Fire and Ice

by nirejseki



Series: Fire and Ice [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Gen, M/M, but not in the way you might think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 11:47:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6564901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Role Reversal AU: Mick's the brains, Len's the brawn. Everything else stays the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire and Ice

People underestimate the two of them. 

Lots of people take one look at Mick’s face and shoulders, his reputation for pyromania, and peg him for the dumb muscle. Therefore, by process of elimination, that means Len must be the brains of the operation. Len’s certainly clever enough for it by a long mile; he has a positively terrifying sense of time and an intuitive understanding of security systems and building blueprints, and boy can he chatter about them for ages. 

People only ever make the mistake of trying to talk to Len without Mick around once.

“Len, put him down,” Mick shouts from across the room, not even looking up from the layout of the art gallery they were hitting tomorrow. “ _Now_.”

Len puts the guy down. Right onto his kneecap. 

There’s an audible _crunch_ as the guy’s nose breaks.

“Goddamnit, Lenny. That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“He insulted you,” Len replied, totally unashamed of himself. A little violence always cheered him up; violence aimed at people who disrespected Mick or Lisa being a personal favorite. “Wanted to see if I’d be willing to cut you out.”

Mick snorted. “Like you’d last three minutes without me,” he says fondly. It’s true – Len’s too savage, too wild, to be allowed out without a leash. Mick can keep him in check, most of the time, but Len’s temper is as slippery as the ice he adores and could be as treacherous and sudden as a goddamn avalanche. 

Even Mick isn’t always exempt – he had a fair number of scars to which his partner was the unabashed author, including the nasty one on his shoulder that other cons were always impressed by. He’d won more than one round of drinks on that, betting people that they couldn’t guess what caused it. No one ever guessed that that sort of damage could be done using nothing more than teeth and jaw. 

That’s why Mick ran the ops. One wouldn’t usually have the pyro in a crew, much less running it, but Mick banked his fire. Controlled it. Fire was extremely volatile, after all; it required careful precision to truly master it. He appreciated the strength and beauty of the raging wildfire as much as the next person, but it was the superheated glow of a controlled flame that really got his interest. Chemicals and metals and high grade tech – if it was about making something hotter, stronger, faster, he was first in line. 

That’s why he couldn’t wait to try out the heat gun Len had found for him; he’d tested it extensively and it was capable of reaching positively insane amounts of heat in the form of a wave function, rather than just spewing flames everywhere like your regular old flamethrower. He’d been working on getting it to different stages: a laser-narrow scalpel, a wide field of hot air that could be used as an accelerant or a vacuum, short blasts and long. 

Len had laid claim to the cold gun at the first instance, of course. He’d gone haring off after some diamond in Central and ran into some sort of super-speed man who’d interrupted him. He’d frozen an entire theater in revenge and shattered it into a thousand jagged pieces, laughing maniacally as the speedster had desperately tried to get people out of the way only to suffer several shots from Len’s new toy. 

Speedster had no idea how lucky he was that Len was so happy with his toy he’d almost forgotten to be mad.

Almost.

Then Len had destroyed an entire goddamn train on his way out of town, because of course he had. But he’d come back, safe and sound and positively rosy-cheeked with glee, presented the diamond to his sister and the heat gun to Mick like a cat bringing home a bird’s corpse to its master.

Both of them had appreciated the thought.

“Why’re we hitting the art gallery, Mick?” Len asked, hopping onto the table. “We could go back to Central. They’re calling him the Flash, now; you could make him _sizzle_.” Len’s grin widened. “I think he’s got accelerated healing. You think if I froze off a leg, he’d regrow it eventually?”

“You need to learn not to break your toys on the first outing, Lenny,” Mick admonished mildly. “First we hit the gallery, then we can go visit your new playmate. I got the perfect target in Central anyways.”

“Also art?” Len asked, knowing that Mick liked to work with themes – 18th century sculptures; old coins of various ancient civilizations; and most recently a series of paintings, all modern art. 

“Oh, yeah,” Mick said, his own grin finally breaking through. Lenny was going to love this. “Turns out next week the Rathaways are bringing _this_ baby home from Paris.”

Len took one look at the webpage and fell off the table laughing. 

_Fire and Ice_.

The slow controlled hiss of gas coming alight, the elegant mathematics that lay behind a bomb; the sharp unexpected crack of ice breaking beneath your feet, the merciless onslaught of the blizzard.

That’s them.

\---------------------------------

They meet in juvie. 

Mick’s minding his own business, keeping his head down and his nose out of trouble. He’s on his way back from visiting his shrink, actually; she’s pretty nice, been suggesting he focus on ways to manage the pyro thing instead of just trying suppress it. If she’d suggested that, he would have tuned her out, but as it is, he’s thinking about it. Hasn’t really decided yet.

He’s barely halfway down the hall when he hears the commotion. Sounds like Robby and his gang of thug wannabes have found new meat to torment. _Young_ meat, too, judging by the high pitched voice which tells Robby to…Mick’s eyebrows shoot up. Kid has a hell of a vocabulary. 

Kid is going to _die_.

He double-times it to the cafeteria, if only to try to prevent actual homicide from going down. Robby was flashing a shiv around at breakfast, boasting about trying it out on someone at his first chance. Looks like he’s found it. 

Except when Mick gets there, he doesn’t intervene.

He doesn’t _need_ to.

Five against one, and the kid – god, he’s a tiny little thing, definitely under five feet, looks all of maybe ten years old – is just killing them. Little fingers rip at eyes, faces, ears, anything he can get to; the kid isn’t just fighting dirty, he’s a freaking maniac. He gets Robby down and starts smashing his head into the ground; if one of Robby’s thugs hadn’t taken advantage of their significantly larger size to literally throw the kid into the wall, Robby’s head would be nothing more than a smear on the concrete floor.

Kid’s getting himself up now, a bit wobbly from being literally pitched headfirst into a wall, but he’s actually _advancing_ on the gang now, teeth bared in a snarl and fire in his eyes. 

Mick’s always appreciated fire.

He steps in, bellows, “What the hell are you doing?” in a sufficiently intimidating voice. The gang takes one look at him and gratefully uses the excuse to scatter to the winds with dignity. No one wants to take on Mick; everyone respects that. It’s a lot less shameful than running away from some baby twerp here on his first day inside. 

As soon as his targets are out of sight, the kid turns to Mick, eyes still wide and feral, blood spilling down his face from a cut by his hairline. He looks savage. “I don’t need your help,” the kid spits at him.

“No, kid, you sure as hell didn’t,” Mick agrees cheerfully. He’s not worried; kid’s a hell of a fighter against people twice his size – Mick _saw_ that groin shot – but Mick’s better. Well, he thinks so, anyway. At least until the kid gains a few more pounds. “I’d say _they_ did, but that’d give the impression that I cared if they lived or died.”

Kid’s still glaring at him, then turns and slams his fist on the table next to him with an unholy shriek of rage. Mick flinches a little; by the time the kid’s done beating out his anger on the innocent furniture, the table’s broken and the kid’s hands look like hamburger. But he’s starting to resemble something human again.

“My name’s Mick,” he offers cautiously. 

The kid looks up at him. He looks calmer now, but Mick can tell it’s a lie – that rage is still in there, bubbling away, just waiting for a chance to peek through. Waiting for an excuse. “My name’s Leonard Snart,” he says eventually. 

Mick nods. 

“I’ve got some anger issues,” Snart adds. It sounds vaguely scripted, like something a lawyer or a cop told him to say when introducing himself to new people. Also, given what Mick just witnessed, _totally unnecessary_.

“You new?”

“First day,” Snart says.

Mick doesn’t bother asking if he was trying to make a name for himself in a bid for self-protection. One look at how Snart’s firsts are clenching and unclenching could tell you it’s not true; if Robby was looking for an excuse to show off how tough he was, this kid was looking for an excuse to let loose the monster inside. 

“You got a bunk yet?” he asks instead. When the kid shakes his head, he nods. “You can take one near me,” he tells him, holding up a hand to forestall the automatic protest he can see coming. “Robby and his boys are going to want revenge for that, and no one can fight back when they’re asleep.”

Snart smiles, baring blood-stained teeth, clearly not agreeing with Mick’s assumptions. But he follows Mick anyway. 

“You know ten’s too young to die, right?” Mick feels compelled to ask. If the kid doesn’t learn to control himself, it’s going to happen, and soon, too. 

“I’m _thirteen_. Fourteen in a month and change.”

Mick considers.

“You make it to fourteen,” he says aloud, mostly to himself, deciding. “I’ll actually make an effort to get my pyromania under control.”

Snart looks at him like he’s nuts. “Why the hell would you want to do that?” he asks, skittering up the ladder like a monkey to take the top bunk without even asking which one had been Mick’s.

Mick doesn’t answer. He doesn’t think the kid’ll take it too well, hearing that the reason is that Mick doesn’t want to turn into someone like Snart, more animal than human. He knows himself, knows that if he lets it run unchecked, it will consume him. Fire’s like that: wild, uncontrolled.

Only thing that can tame a fire is man.

Snart survives the month.

Mick changes.

\--------------------------------

Of all of their safe houses and home bases, Mick’s gotta say, he likes STAR Labs the best. The quality of the lab equipment is superb, no one ever questions the type of chemicals or prototypes he orders no matter how big the order, and having Cisco Ramon around basically means never getting too bored.

Plus, Barry is always willing to run and get them _proper_ take-out. Gotham pizza, Philly cheese steaks, Star City fish and chips, New Orleans gumbo, Hub City cheesecake – plus vast amounts of good old Central City coffee, which everyone else very seriously seemed to think was superior to all other competitors. (Mick keeps his Keystone-bred opinions on the subject quiet.)

Even Lenny’s pretty happy, temper kept cool on a strict combo of good food, anti-metahuman violence, and a crew that pays him the proper sort of respect. Hilariously, the media still seems to think “Captain Cold” (Ramon had the weirdest naming fetish, but Mick wasn’t judging) and the Flash were archenemies, probably due to Len’s regrettable tendency to lash out at enemies and allies alike on the battlefield. It mostly resulted in a plethora of aggravated young teenagers wearing Cold-themed merchandise and sulking in grandiose fashion, while children played increasingly inventive Cold vs. Flash games with or without their brand-new action figures.

It was a real question as to who was more weirded out by it all, Barry or Len. 

Mick and Cisco ended up working out a whole merchandising scheme between the two of them when they realized how popular everything was getting and got Barry’s hacker-friend, Felicity, to establish their trademarks, back-dated. Scientists around the country might turn their noses up when they find out that STAR Labs’ income wasn’t coming from pure science anymore, but hey, at least they _had_ an income. _Something_ needed to keep STAR Labs’ lights on, with a science crew as small as theirs.

(Barry and Len had no idea and everyone was in complete agreement to keep it that way. It was a question as to what people were more afraid of: Len’s fits of rage or Barry’s sad puppy dog eyes.)

With their contact at the police department keeping them clear from the cops – Joe West was never going to like them, but they’d saved the lives of both his kids and his partner – Mick had finally turned his attention to eradicating the stranglehold that the various mob families had on Central City. He’d always hated them (nothing like how Lenny hated them) but even he’d known better than try to make a serious move against them. But that was before he’d gotten his team of meta-humans together. 

Plus, the hero-side always got so cheerful when they realized he was going to send them after what Caitlin termed “legit bad guys.” 

Right now Mick was slouched back in his chair, working on his plans to destabilize the Darbyinian hold on the south-east docks while a simulation he and Cisco had developed (they were still working on the perfect heat sink generator to enable flight) hummed away on the computers when Eddie Thawne came in, looking a little harried.

Mick raised an eyebrow, sitting up. Eddie still took his responsibilities as a badge pretty seriously, so he didn’t swing by STAR Labs too much ever since Mick had taken it over, unless of course there was a meta-human emergency – that, or Iris was driving him nuts over wedding crap and he had nowhere else to retreat to.

“Any news?” he asked casually, studying the man. Didn’t _look_ too urgent…

Eddie shook his head. “Iris is a little stressed about meeting her previously unknown brother and wanted to talk about it,” he said, grimacing. Mick is unsurprised. “For an hour. After which I was under no circumstances to contact her until the whole thing was over with because she didn’t want to think about it or something. Also…” He trailed off.

That was new.

“Also?” Mick prompted when nothing seemed forthcoming.

“I heard you were planning on going after the mafia.”

“Mob,” Len purred from where he was lounging on the couch on his side of the room, where Lisa was also perched, petting his head and observing all she surveyed with a proprietary pride. “They ain’t all Italian, so they’re the _mob_.”

Cisco looked up from where he and Hartley were bent over some new radar device aimed at identifying potential other-Earth incursions that might occur without a breach. “Wait, no, the Santinis are _totally_ Italian,” he objected. “And the Maronis are, too.” Caitlin and Shawna both made sounds of half-interested agreement before returning to analyzing the results of something or another; probably Shawna’s term project for medical school that Caitlin was helping her with. 

“Darbyinians are Armenian,” Barry called from the treadmill. “And, what’s it called, the offshoot group down by the north shore – Ranskahovs? Something like that. They’re Russian.”

“Maybe we should start with them, boss,” Len said with a fierce grin, sitting up. “I like Russians; they’re nice and frosty.”

“Closest _you_ ever got to a Russian is drinking a White Russian at the bar,” Barry taunted fondly. He was the only one who even thought about tweaking Len’s nose like that, probably because he was the only one in the room who healed up all the scars Len gave him. Luckily for everyone, Len actually liked it.

“Like you’d know what a bar is,” Len shot back with a smirk. “Tell me, how long do you have till you get to vote?”

“To _vote_?! Are you _kidding_ –” Barry started spluttering indignantly, which had the side effect of making him lose focus on the significantly souped-up treadmill and promptly go flying backwards into the wall behind him. Len settled back into his couch with a victorious smile even as Barry shouted, “I’m okay!” from the pile of cardboard boxes and old mattresses they’d placed there for exactly this event.

Eddie looked deeply perturbed for a minute, particularly when no one seemed particularly concerned for Barry’s dilemma (it got old after the first fifteen times), but then shook his head. “However you call them, you’re going after them and I want to help you do it. We’ve been trying to get an anti-organized crime squad set up in the CCPD for years but City Hall keeps blocking it –”

“Big surprise there,” Hartley mumbled. 

“– so if you’re going to take them down, I want to help,” Eddie finished, ignoring Hartley. 

Mick smiled. Len had pointed out (in private) the benefits of having another man on the inside of the CCPD, someone more reliable and more photogenic, more _promotable_ , than Joe West, and Eddie was the unswervingly loyal sort that would find it difficult to extract himself once he’d baked himself in. That was one of the reasons Mick had opted to go after the mob families, other than his general distaste for them and his desire to eradicate the competition. 

With Eddie on board, they just needed to figure out if Mardon and that Firestorm guy were going to be allies or impediments (if the latter, for clarity, read: dead) and his little crew would be complete.

He should probably ask Cisco to come up with a name for them.

“Sure, buddy. You’re in.”

\-----------------------------------

The first time Mick met Lisa, it was three in the morning and he’d been alternating between blissful dreams of a beautifully burning building (possibly his house?) and nightmares involving writing a thesis on the combustion mechanisms best suited for burning temperatures that weren’t currently possible. He would’ve thought not actually being in school would have taken care of those dreams – he’d always thought they were reserved for grad students. 

Given that he’d broken it off with his last crew and no one else had his phone number, he figured he could (eventually) be forgiven for answering the phone as he did.

After about a minute, he cut off the stream of profanity and asked, “Is there anyone even _there_?”

“Um,” a young-sounding female voice said. “Is this Mick Rory?”

Mick was struck by a momentary and entirely inexplicable burst of terror that she was selling Girl Scout cookies and he’d just cussed her out. He attributed it to still having one foot in dreamland, because even he knew that Girl Scouts didn’t sell cookies at three A.M.

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“My name’s Lisa. Lisa Snart – my brother talks about you sometimes? Lenny – uh, Leonard Snart? Do you remember him?”

Like Mick could _forget_. And yeah, the kid had mentioned a sister in one quiet moment; he’d been writing a letter and Mick had been curious to know who it’d been addressed to given how un-insulting the content was. 

“Yeah, sure, I remember him,” he said. “Why are you calling me?”

“Because I can’t think of anyone else who might be able to help,” Lisa said, her voice wobbling even as she made a strident effort to control it. She sounded on the verge of tears. Mick seriously contemplated just hanging up the phone – he did not need crying girls all up in his business – but this may in fact mark the first time anyone has ever asked him for anything, so he figured he might as well find out what was up.

“You need something burnt down?” he asked, curious. He’d planned out some solo jobs that went pretty smooth, but among other people he was still known first and foremost for his taste for arson. 

“No. I need…um.” She took a deep breath, voice still wobbling. “Lenny said once that you knew how to make him calm down?”

Mick was entirely taken aback. Sure, he’d helped the kid out when they were in the pen together, he’d been pretty good at it, but they hadn’t spoken in three years. And now his little sister was calling him for help?

“Hey, how’d you get this number anyway?” he asked.

“Lenny has it in his phonebook,” she replied promptly, voice clearing up as she moved onto something less emotional. “He calls the telephone company every month and says he’s you and that you got a memory problem so they tell him what your latest number is even when you switch it.”

Well, no one had ever said Len wasn’t a clever little bastard. Also, apparently, a bit of an obsessive stalker, albeit a very circumspect and not bothersome one.

“I…see,” he said. “So what’s the problem? He’s not calming down?”

“No. Normally he just burns through it, you know? Kicks and screams and hits things and stuff –” Mick rubbed the inside of his thigh in memory of one such incident. “But then he gets over it, right? Except this time nothing’s been helping.”

“How long has it been?” 

“Coming up on three days.”

 _Christ_.

“What _happened_?” Mick asked incredulously. Three days in an incoherent fit of rage, by her description – hell, even fires burnt themselves out eventually. 

Lisa went quiet for a second, then said, “Can you help him?”

Mick really should know better than to agree, but he’d _liked_ Len. Len had stolen him a lighter – the most contraband of contraband around Mick – for his birthday right before he’d left juvie. 

He sighed. “Yeah, kid. Where are you?”

“Um. I’m at the phone booth.” Before he can snap irritably at her, she clarifies, “The one on Highwood and Beck.”

“Huh. That’s just down the block from me.”

Lisa is suspiciously quiet. Either Len was more thorough with his surveillance than she’d mentioned, or a lack of respect for privacy ran in the family.

“I’ll be out in a minute.”

Mick picked her up in his car – he’d checked to make sure it was her, because picking up underage chicks was _not_ something he wanted in his resume and she was that ambiguous girl age of not-quite-boobs (could be anywhere between 10 and 17, he’d found; he was shit at estimating ages) – and he’d driven following her directions to one of the trashier suburban neighborhoods. Better than the warehouse district he’d been squatting in, but not by much. 

There was an animal in her basement with the shape of a man.

Len used none of the finesse Mick had taught him, pounding against the wall and wailing his rage when it did not yield. His pupils were wildly dilated, which was just plain old wrong in a room this badly lit, and that’s what gave Mick the first inklings that this fit was not natural.

“Has he eaten anything? Or drunk anything?” 

Lisa shrugged a little, looking ashamed. “I made him a sandwich once?” she said hesitantly. “And there’s a faucet in there I think he’s been drinking from. But otherwise he’s mostly been throwing up.”

“Looks like he’s detoxing from some really bad shit,” Mick observed. “And unless something’s changed in the last few years, Len wasn’t really the type to do drugs.”

“He isn’t,” she said, but she’s hiding something. 

“I can’t help him if you don’t tell me what’s up,” he said, echoing the stuff his shrink was always feeding him. Lisa glares at him, crossing her arms in front of her chest, silently calling his bluff. But he isn’t actually a shrink, so he amends it to, “I _won’t_ help him if you don’t tell me what’s up.”

They stared at each other. She’s good, he’ll give her that, but she doesn’t stand a chance.

“I think Dad gave him something,” she confessed. “Ever since he got back from juvie, maybe even before, Dad’s been taking him to some sort of place; kids fight it out and people bet on it. He gets hurt, but he usually just tries to cover it up – and he’s been angry, he’s always been angry – but this time he was _so_ angry – he even went after Dad and he knows better than to do that –”

Mick had always wondered what sort of person would take a kid as bright as Len and make him into what he was now; looks like he’s finally going to get a chance to meet the fucker and introduce him to the wrong end of a knife. But first he’s got to get Len to calm down. Mick pulls off his jacket, stripping down to the tank top he wears to sleep so he has full mobility for his arms, and walks into the room, starts to wrestle Len down to the floor. He knows how Len works. If Mick can just get him still, he can get him calm; if he can get him calm, he can get him _out_ …

Len takes a freaking chunk out of his shoulder with his teeth.

Mick yowled in agony and body slams Len into the ground. It probably wouldn’t have helped normally, but nearly three days of malnutrition and probably lack of sleep aren’t doing Len any favors. It still takes another ten minutes for him to finally stop fighting. He’s still twitching with rage, but there are glimmers of sanity buried in there.

“Len?” Mick asked carefully, even as Lisa cries out from the door, “Lenny!”

“…’isa?” Len asked blearily. “ _Mick_?”

“Hey, kid. Long time no see.”

Mick pulls back, still bracing himself on Len’s legs so he won’t be able to get up. It’s the first good look he’s gotten at him close up and it’s horrifying. The kid’s body is a mess of pale scars – some he recognizes as being the results of a beating, either by fist or switch or belt, others as healed-over cuts from a knife or maybe a bottle, but a large number he can’t place at all. They web out on his skin like lightning. He would bet money that they were made by something electric, and unfortunately the only things that come to mind are high grade tasers and cattle prods. He hopes that’s not right, but Lisa’s comments about kid fights combined with Len’s tendency to lash out make him think that a warden might resort to those as a means of control or pacification.

Man, he might hate Child Services as much as the next foster kid, but they really blew it with this one. 

“You’re gonna come with me, Lenny,” he said, echoing Lisa’s childish nickname. It seems to calm Len down. “I’m getting you out of here. For good.”

“Can’t,” Len panted, still not entirely himself and still twisting in an attempt to get up, to keep fighting. “ _Lisa_.”

“She can come too,” Mick replied, not really meaning it but happy to say anything that got Len back down into himself. 

“Kidnapping,” Len said, still breathing hard, his body still jerking a little as he finally turned his struggles towards trying to control his temper and whatever the hell uppers he got hit with. “Can’t… _badge_ …”

Mick didn’t understand. It was Lisa who answered. “You take me away, our dad’ll get you for kidnapping and put out an APB or whatever,” she said grimly. “He’s a cop.”

Christ, that was really fucked up. 

Lisa sidles forward and puts a hand on Mick’s shoulder. “You should still take him away,” she says. “Dad isn’t as bad to me; he doesn’t want to do anything that’ll wreck my looks. And it’s only a few more years, it’s not so long.”

“Can’t I just kill him?” Mick asked, quite serious. He’d killed before, one time even on purpose during a heist gone south. 

Lisa looked tempted, but Len shook his head frantically. “He’s paid off,” he said. “It’d piss off the Families. He patrols the area where they run the fights.”

Mick never had much view on the mob families before, had even thought about joining up once or twice when work was low and the mob was looking for new enforcers, but he was very, very happy he hadn’t ever gone through with it. Extracting himself now would have been a pain.

“Can I burn down the place where they hold the fights, at least?”

Len gave a final shudder and then relaxed. He was still angry, that much was clear; it was like the anger had frozen solid inside of him, impossible to eradicate, but he just gave in and let it all go for now, lying helpless in Mick’s arms without fighting back, relying on Mick not to hurt him or take advantage even after all of that. That’s what trust looks like, Mick thought to himself, and felt honored.

“Yeah, boss,” Len said, smiling faintly up at Mick. “We can do that.”

\-------------------------------

Mick was not going to let himself get killed by some guy who thinks banana yellow is the height of fashion. That much he wanted to make clear.

He spit out some blood and got back on his feet, charging the heat gun back up.

Eobard Thawne had unsurprisingly not taken too kindly to Barry’s refusal to play ball with his grandiose plan and was taking it out on everyone. Mick shouldn’t even _be_ here. 

Mick’s involvement in all this had all started a few weeks back, when the Flash had reached out to him and Len to help him transfer some metahumans he’d apparently been keeping prisoner. Mick had laughed in his face, Len had (upon request) recited all the various portions of the Geneva Conventions and local police regulations that the Flash was breaking, and then, just as the kid was looking incredibly sick to his stomach, Mick had taken pity and offered to transport them out of state in his own way. 

“No offense, kid,” Len had told the Flash when he’d baulked at letting Mick make the plans. “But grapevine says you’re up against someone who knows you real well.”

The Flash had nodded despondently. “Yeah, he was my mentor for the last year, but apparently he’s been spying on me through cameras.” His face had gone horrified with realization. “He might have been spying on me for _fifteen years_.”

Len had nodded. “See, that’s your problem. He knows you, he knows your friends. He knows what you’re like, how you think. Anything you plan, he’ll have a counter. It’d be like Mick and me going head to head – any of our usual plays won’t work. You need to think outside the box.”

“And outside the box is a bunch of criminals?” the Flash had said doubtfully.

“You don’t have to trust me,” Mick had intervened. He hadn’t really cared about the kid’s evil mentor problems – something he was now deeply regretting the irony of – so he’d wanted to get to the point. “I can get your metahumans out of the city.”

“And in return?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Getting the metahumans out had been easy. He’d had the Flash and his team stand aside and orchestrated a fake break-in into the building, offering each of the metahumans a free ride out of Central with a whole set of fake IDs, provided they laid low for at least a month, didn’t cause too much trouble and gave him a heads up before they came back. Most of them gratefully took him up on the offer, willingly letting him bundle him into the back a truck headed out of town. The IDs were tagged, of course, so he’d be able to keep an eye on them. 

One of them – a guy who turned into some type of mist – tried to kill him. 

The Flash – name of Barry Allen, apparently – had told him about each of their powers in advance, so Mick had the heat gun already primed and ready to go. 

Seems no one told the meta that aerosol chemicals ignite beautifully. 

Now he had four metas in his back pocket, owing him favors, plus they’re out of the Flash’s way without any more of that whole “denial of human rights” shit, which means the Flash owes him a handful of favors now too. Mick full expected one of the metas to get himself shot by the police double quick – shooting lasers out of your eyes is a power basically asking for trouble, in his view – but he was pretty sure he’d be able to get some use out of the other three. A teleporter, a guy who controls the weather, and a human mood ring – sounds like the start of a bad joke. 

It would have been a good day’s work at the end of it, too, if Barry hadn’t latched onto Len’s stupid little speech and come around, all doe-eyed, asking for help to defeat his evil mentor. 

In a fit of optimism, Mick had demanded that Barry trade him some to-be-agreed-upon-later work, done as the Flash, plus that of his friends. Much to his surprise, Barry had agreed, as had the doctor and the inventor, though they’d stipulated that they wouldn’t murder anyone (why would he need them for _that_?) or do anything that would cause anyone serious harm (again, _why_ would he want to hire a _superhero_ for _that_?). 

Len had been wary of the deal, but had been very happy to play speed vs. cold with Barry in the pipeline as the others filled Mick on the background and gave him time to plan. It also had the convenient side effect of raising Team Flash morale, because Len’s reflexes and ability to forecast where Barry would be in a second before Barry had even started heading there were ridiculous, making the match a lot more even than Mick suspected the Flash had thought it would be. Caitlin and Cisco had watched through the cameras, interspersing cheering Barry on with (badly) hushed commentary about how awesome it would be to see Len (Captain Cold? _Really_?) go up against the bad guy. 

Even Barry himself had been able to unwind for a bit (other than yelping every time Len hit him in the ass with a blast of cold), which Mick thought was all to the good. It seemed obvious that Thawne’s plan clearly relied on Barry being under so much pressure he couldn’t think straight, which anyone would be able to figure out within minutes of meeting the kid. That’s why all planning was being outsourced to Mick, who was an expert in keeping a hothead under control. 

It’d been going surprisingly well.

That was then.

This is now.

Eobard’s future ship was in pieces and he was _fast_ , fast beyond imagining. Years of practice, no doubt, amped up by some sort of future tech; he had a whole bag of tricks that Mick hadn’t been able to foresee and no hesitation in beating them all bloody. 

“I know what I need to do,” one of the badges that was crouched near where Mick fell whispered to himself. 

Mick took one look at him, ID’d him in his mental snapbook, and snapped, “You do anything right now and I will torch your girlfriend next chance I get.”

The man’s head had snapped towards him. “What? No, you don’t understand –”

“You’re Eddie Thawne, right? Ancestor of his bright and yellow-ness over there?”

“Bright and– Eobard? Yeah. If I die…”

“We’re not done yet,” Mick snarled. “And we have _no idea_ if time even works that way. What if it’s one of those universes where you go off into a different timeline every time you change something in the past? Then it would have no effect and we’d be down one player.”

“Eobard said –”

“Oh, yeah, that’s bright. Trust the guy who’s been building a master plan for fifteen years not to feed you a false flag.”

Thawne-the-present-tense paused, clearly considering that; it made him stop paying attention long enough for Mick to club him over the head. He wasn’t going to risk Eobard’s comments to Eddie being part of the big plan. Besides, even if it wasn’t, if time worked that way, Eddie should have been able to destroy Eobard just by vowing never to have kids. That, or this entire timeline would be destroyed because it had been created in large part by Eobard’s actions, and if Eobard had never been born he would have never been able to change the original timeline by killing Barry’s mother, which spelled disaster. Mick had also had Cisco look at the math three times last night – they couldn’t risk any disruptions to the timeline that big anywhere near Barry’s time travelling hijinks, or it would risk re-opening the singularity and destroying the world. 

Mick just wasn’t going to risk it.

Mick surveyed the field, sees Len pick himself up from where he’d gotten tossed. Len looks pissed, as usual. “Take him down, Lenny!” he called out to his partner with a grin.

Len acknowledged the order by flipping him off.

Mick laughed and charged forward, back into the fray, setting his heat gun up high enough that he was able to melt off a portion of Eobard’s boot although, sadly, his leg regenerated the damage. Eobard roared with rage and dropped Barry from where he was holding him against the wall. 

Thus far Eobard had been focused on Barry, even though he’d thrown anyone who’d interfered in their fight aside – though he’d spared a moment earlier to punch Len a dozen or so times at the first sign of the cold gun. 

Now, though, he turned straight to Mick and his hand started buzzing like a saw. “You pathetic piece of _meat_ ,” he snarled. “You’re going to regret that.”

Yeah, Mick was more or less in agreement with that last bit. 

He had half a second to brace himself before Eobard was upon him; in that moment, he pressed the trigger of his heat gun, sliding the latch for a wider ray so that the air around him exploded with flames. It was probably the only thing that saved him from getting outright skewered.

As it was, the vibrating saw Eobard was using instead of a hand sliced into him shallowly, causing blood to spurt out in a way that Mick could tell from experience spoke of hospital time. A second later Mick was flying backwards so fast that the next sensation he was aware of was of hitting the wall. He crumpled to the ground like a cheap toy.

It wasn’t until he thought about maybe moving again that the pain hit.

He stayed nice and still, clutching at his stomach in the hopes that his intestines weren’t spilling out all over the floor (he didn’t actually feel anything in his hands, but his gut sure felt like they were and he couldn’t see them, so he wasn’t going to risk it), and waited for the roaring in his ears to die down. 

It did after a minute, only for him to realize that there actually was roaring, and it was his name. Len was _incandescent_ with fury, standing where he had picked himself up from where he’d been counting out some seriously bruised ribs and possibly a concussion, not to mention a hell of a black eye or two, positioned just perfectly and just in time to see Mick go down hard. 

His cold gun clutched in one hand, Len strode forward, eyes fixed on Eobard. He was terrifying, his teeth bared and bloody and his eyes dark with wrath. Even Eobard was frozen into place momentarily by that gaze, as if Len had suddenly become some meta-human Medusa. “Barry!” Len called out, eyes still fixed on his target. “Get him out of here!”

“But –”

“ _Now_.”

No one ever argued with Len when he used that tone. Mick found himself back up where the entrance back in to the labs was, high above the ground level of the particle accelerator. A second later, Eddie’s unconscious body and Joe’s bruised one were there as well, and Barry was panting hard, on his knees on the ground beside them. They were all there, up top; the only people left on the floor of the accelerator were Eobard and Len. 

Len was facing off against Eobard _by himself_. Mick groaned silently with very real pain, trying to shift his body so that he could get back there and failing on every count. 

Caitlin caught his shoulders. “Mick..?” she said cautiously, then gave a sigh of relief when she realized he was alive. “Oh, thank god.”

“Wait, he’s alive?” Barry gasped out. “I thought –”

Christ, Barry had been down there. If _he_ thought Mick was dead, Mick didn’t even want to know what was going through Len’s head right now.

He ignored both Caitlin and the pain, pulling himself over to the edge so he could see what was happening.

“I’m going to kill you,” Len was saying. “I am going to _smash you to pieces_.”

Eobard broke free of his momentary paralysis, shaking his head and laughing in Len’s face. “You can’t defeat me,” he sneered. “None of you can. I’m going to rip you open just like I did your friend, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. Even that cold gun of yours can’t help you –”

And suddenly in a blink he was there, right in front of Len, holding Len up by the throat.

“– because I’m just _too fast_ for you. For all of you!”

Len laughed.

A raspy, gurgling laugh, but definitely a laugh.

Eobard gaped at him, shocked out of his boasting and looking disturbed by Len’s reaction. “What’s so funny?” he asked suspiciously.

“I modified the gun,” Len choked out. “I let go of the trigger, the core goes critical. And you get three guesses as to what I just did.”

Eobard stared at him in disbelief for just one moment before he began to drop Len and turn away to run.

That moment was all that was necessary.

The blast of cold rocketed through the particle accelerator, knocking even the people up on the entrance back with the force of the concussive blast. In the circular frame of the accelerator, the sound of the explosion seemed to bounce off the walls, turning everything icy and brittle; the only safe spot was where they were, shielded by the curvature of the door back inside to the lab. Mick’s world went temporarily white, though he wasn’t sure if that was the light from the explosion or the pain from his gut. 

It took a few minutes before the sound and the fury of the blast wore off and they all sat up, except for Mick who didn’t even bother to try. He tugged weakly at Barry’s sleeve. “ _Len_ ,” he whispered. “What happened to…?”

Barry looked at him blankly. Cisco helped Mick sit up and pointed wordlessly down into the pit, which had turned into something not unlike the inside of a gigantic hockey rink. And inside, right at the center, were two frozen figures a few feet apart. One was half turned away, knees bent, ready to run. One lay crumpled where he had fallen. 

_Lenny._

“I wanna see him,” Mick said through gritted teeth.

“You need medical attention–” Caitlin started.

“I _want to see him_ ,” Mick said again. 

She looked at him, then decided he was serious, which he was. “Barry, help me bandage him up, then you can take him down there. But only for a minute, and then I need you to get him back to the medical lab upstairs as soon as possible.”

Barry nodded, and suddenly there was a blur of movement, and Mick’s chest and torso was all wrapped up. With his clothing on the inside, but he wasn’t about to complain. He needed to see Len.

Barry took him down silently, until they were both standing before the two figures. They were so iced over, it was virtually impossible to see their bodies. Eobard’s face was visible, still frozen in shock, unable to comprehend his defeat.

Fitting, really.

“You get first shove, kid,” Mick rasped to Barry, who just blinked at him. Mick gestured at Eobard. “ _Shove_ , kid. Didn’t you hear Len?”

Barry nodded slowly. “He said he was going to shatter him,” he said slowly. Then, in a burst of super-human speed, he leapt forward and slammed his fist into the Eobard icicle. It shattered beautifully. Barry didn’t stop there, fists flying in bursts of lightening, as he worked out some of his anger on the shards – quickly turning into dust now – of the man who had betrayed him.

Only then did Mick turn to look at Len. He looked almost peaceful, lying there curled up, covered by the rime and frost. His skin was still pale, almost tinted blue, almost as if he’d slowly and peacefully frozen to death in a snowdrift; he had none of the black frostbite that covered Eobard’s extremities in death. 

Mick collapsed near his friend and covered his eyes with his hands. He’d done this. He’d brought Len here, to this fight; he’d ordered him to take Eobard down. Mick’s last ever order to Len, as far as Len knew. 

“Goddamnit, Lenny,” he said. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Ice cracked as if breaking.

“He insulted you,” Len rasped. 

Mick lifted his head from his hands, mouth falling open in shock. Len uncurled, the sound of ice cracking around him as it fell off his skin in crystalline shimmers of glass sounding exactly like the sound his spine made when he stretched himself out in the morning. Even as Mick watched, the deathly blue pallor of Len’s skin faded back into rosy health.

Hell, he looked healthier than he had in years, well rested and happy and sated for once in his life. 

“How…?” Barry said from behind Mick. Mick was sure he had a fantastic expression on his face, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off of his partner. 

“No idea,” Len replied, inspecting his hands. Then he grinned. “But it’s pretty _cool_ , isn’t it?”

“I’m going to kill you myself,” Mick said blankly, then collapsed in on himself as the pain kicked in again. This time he blacked out.

\-------------------------

Mick woke up some unknown time later in the medical lab, desperately hoping that last bit hadn’t been a dream or a pain-induced hallucination.

He grabbed Caitlin’s sleeve. 

“Oh! You’re awake already – seriously, your tolerance for sedatives is absurd, and you don’t even have Barry’s metabolism for an excuse…”

“Len?” he asked. If it had been a hallucination – if Len was really dead – he didn’t know _what_ he was going to do but it was going to be big and on fire and possibly involve the eradication of the entirety of Central City –

“He’s fine,” Caitlin assured him. “Turns out he had the meta-human gene and causing the explosion in the particle accelerator of all places kicked it into high gear. We’re still not 100% sure what the full extent of his powers are, but so far we’ve definitively established a high tolerance for extreme cold and, uh, the ability to shoot ice out of his hands.”

Mick stared at her. “Shoot ice out of his–? Christ. He’s going to be _intolerable_.”

“On the contrary, boss,” Len drawled, poking his head into the room, followed closely by a relieved-looking Barry. “I think I’m handling the whole thing in a really _chill_ way.”

“You’re going to do that till the rest of eternity, aren’t you?” Mick asked, unsure if he was feeling his usual irritation or if it was entirely drowned by the overwhelming feeling of relief at the sight of Len’s unblemished face.

“Aw, Mick. No need to be so _cold_.”

Mick thumped his head down back onto the pillow and he pointed at Barry. “You owe me _so many_ favors for this, kid. You’ll be working for me for the rest of eternity just to pay it off, just so you know.”

“So many favors,” Barry said, nodding eagerly. “ _All_ the favors. Rest of eternity, got it. Sign me up. Can you _please_ make him stop with the ice jokes now?”

Len grinned. “When hell _freezes_ over.”

“I _hate_ you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I also take requests at robininthelabyrinth on tumblr. If anyone wants to see more from this universe (or any other), feel free to toss me ideas either here or there!


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